Is it just me, or is this really creepy?

[Elok]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/01/philosophy

It's a blog post musing about recent developments in neurology, which apparently establish that the brain is made up of a number of different interacting modules, representing disparate interests, that fight it out amongst themselves before spitting out a final "decision." The disturbing part (for me) is at the end:

I'm going to have a very hard time condensing what I mean here into a paragraph at the end of a blog post, but roughly: we assign responsibility for desired public outcomes to decision-making units that communicate well internally and have internally shared interests in that outcome. So in general, it makes a lot of sense to make individuals responsible for themselves: modules inside one person's brain may be distinct but they're usually in very close communication and generally share a common interest. However, some brain modules don't communicate well and may conflict with each other. One module in your brain wants to be fit; a different one wants to drink that soda. Taking as a given for the moment that we have a public interest in people being fit, it may make sense to have social institutions work collectively with the modules in everyone's brains that want to be fit, rather than depending on each individual to resolve the contest between their get-fit module and their drink-soda module. The shift in thinking here isn't necessarily so different from the Freudian development of the idea of the subconscious mind. But like psychoanalysis, neuroscience's challenge to the idea that individuals are coherent subjects who make their decisions consciously and can be held responsible for them tends to shift the way one thinks about society and politics. In many cases, it's not only unfair to hold individuals accountable for the actions of the modules in their heads, it's also completely counterproductive, while solutions pursued at either a neuropsychological-pharmacological level or at a social level would be the effective ones.

If I'm reading this right, he's suggesting mind control or something very similar; bypass the decision-making process within the brain by appealing directly to the relevant bit. Thing is, though, that's, uh, cartoon-supervillian territory, and only one person among the commenters so far has remarked, "wow, that's sort of evil, isn't it?" Is it just that this blogger and almost all of his commenters are ghastly human beings who got their conception of morality by somehow synthesizing the works of John Stuart Mill and Chairman Mao? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding them?

[loinburger]

I read it more as "wouldn't it be awesome if humans were completely rational," rather than "wouldn't it be awesome if I were dictator of the world."

[Al B. Sure!]

We already have medication for social anxiety, ADHD, depression, etc.

[Elok]

Well, I don't think he's actually expressing a love of control, no. He just sounds like he's getting misty-eyed about the day when we could potentially keep people from making wrong decisions by pre-emptively making their decisions for them. Or something to that effect. Maybe he wasn't even thinking about the moral dimension of such an idea--but if so, that raises serious questions about the health of his "modules."

[Elok]

We already have medication for social anxiety, ADHD, depression, etc.

Generally such medications are administered with the patient's consent, if not at the patient's own request. I.e., we're still depending on the individual to make the decision.

[loinburger]

Regarding whether it would be awesome if humans were completely rational, I usually assume that this is code for asking "wouldn't it be awesome if everybody agreed with me." Humans are already rational (with a few extreme exceptions, e.g. schizophrenics) in that they don't generally act against their own best interests - it's just that everybody's "best interests" are amalgamations of often conflicting goals, e.g. wanting to be healthy and wanting to eat potato chips.

[giblets]

Generally such medications are administered with the patient's consent, if not at the patient's own request. I.e., we're still depending on the individual to make the decision.

Someone could consent to have their behavior altered so that they'll stop eating junk food.

[Al B. Sure!]

It is sad that for a lot of people that's what it would take. No discipline or self-control.

[giblets]

Regarding whether it would be awesome if humans were completely rational, I usually assume that this is code for asking "wouldn't it be awesome if everybody agreed with me." Humans are already rational (with a few extreme exceptions, e.g. schizophrenics) in that they don't generally act against their own best interests - it's just that everybody's "best interests" are amalgamations of often conflicting goals, e.g. wanting to be healthy and wanting to eat potato chips.

I don't think "doing stuff you feel like doing" is necessarily rational. If you're on some exotic drug and suddenly want to cut off your penis and you do it, that doesn't mean you were rational at the time. Eating potato chips is less extreme behavior but I think it's similar, valuing immediate gratification at the expense of delayed gratification too much is irrational behavior.

[loinburger]

Eating potato chips is less extreme behavior but I think it's similar, valuing immediate gratification at the expense of delayed gratification too much is irrational behavior.

Why is delayed gratification better than immediate gratification? Justify your argument from first principles, because as soon as you introduce a premise such as "delayed gratification will maximize the person's overall gratification" then you've already presupposed that your premise is universal.

[loinburger]

I view rationality similarly to how I view morality, in that people are restricted to how they define "rational" and "moral" by the nature of language itself. (For example, a few years ago GePap said that "murder" was a subjective term because it could mean "a group of crows," but GePap was being retarded, and I hope he knew he was being retarded. Similarly, Imran argued that language was entirely subjective, and that I had no way to determine whether Imran was posting as a rational being or whether he was smashing his head against his keyboard; therefore when he referred to "murder" he could be babbling. Any non-retarded person knows the definition of "murder" as it applies to moral judgments.) An irrational person would say "I want to be healthy, and I realize that potato chips are unhealthy, therefore I am eating potato chips" - he's being self-contradictory. However, a rational person could say "I want to be healthy, but my desire to eat potato chips overrides by desire to be healthy, therefore I am eating potato chips" - this person has dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of conflicting goals, and in this case has decided that the goal to eat potato chips has overridden the goal to be healthy. This is completely rational, even if you or I may place a higher value on health than on the consumption of potato chips.

[Aeson]

It is sad that for a lot of people that's what it would take. No discipline or self-control.

... they can just have discipline or self-control added

[Aeson]

I view rationality similarly to how I view morality, in that people are restricted to how they define "rational" and "moral" by the nature of language itself. (For example, a few years ago GePap said that "murder" was a subjective term because it could mean "a group of crows," but GePap was being retarded, and I hope he knew he was being retarded. Similarly, Imran argued that language was entirely subjective, and that I had no way to determine whether Imran was posting as a rational being or whether he was smashing his head against his keyboard; therefore when he referred to "murder" he could be babbling. Any non-retarded person knows the definition of "murder" as it applies to moral judgments.) An irrational person would say "I want to be healthy, and I realize that potato chips are unhealthy, therefore I am eating potato chips" - he's being self-contradictory. However, a rational person could say "I want to be healthy, but my desire to eat potato chips overrides by desire to be healthy, therefore I am eating potato chips" - this person has dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of conflicting goals, and in this case has decided that the goal to eat potato chips has overridden the goal to be healthy. This is completely rational, even if you or I may place a higher value on health than on the consumption of potato chips.

There is no irrational if you want to define it that way.

[RGBVideo]

It's the old "model the society in order to fit with the greater good of the individuals" versus "model the individuals in order to fit with the greater good of the society" -dilemma in new clothes. The 'people are scientifically irrational and don't know what's good for them' line of thought is particularly unoriginal, replace 'scientifically irrational' with x, y or z and you will find countless examples of societies & communities run this way from history books.

The fallacy, IMO, is that "society" is abstract and "individuals" are real, what good is it to have a "great" society if the individuals within are living in misery?

[RGBVideo]

the last time "model the individuals in order to fit with the greater good of the society"-model was used within a single nation in history was oops godwin